An Update: New Studies on Scapegoats of Narcissistic Families, Wills and Narcissistic Parents, Dissociation, and Some Other Topics of Note

Last time I did an update, I promised the post on hoovering (a very common tactic in the world of narcissism), and yet, it is still not published. I thought other posts I was writing were quite a bit more important and compelling, and that is one reason it got pushed to the "back burner", and the other reason was because I thought it needed the kind of links that my most recent posts have to legitimize the claims I write about. 

So I don't think I need to say "publishing a post soon" kinds of statements since I didn't follow through the last time. The basics that people write about when it comes to narcissism I have already written about with the exception of the isolation tactic, arrogance, grandiosity and haughtiness in narcissism, heightened envy and jealousy in narcissists, the shame-rage spiral, bread-crumbing, intermittent reinforcement, some more punishments narcissists are highly likely to use to get their own way, and of course, hoovering. 

That's not a lot to finish and those posts are primarily done except links and some graphics. So why can't I just "push through" and publish them? 

At the moment I'm way more interested in what family scapegoats have in common (they have a lot in common with one another as it turns out), healing strategies for scapegoats, and what PTSD does to the brain and body, why dissociation can become a big problem for scapegoats and why that can impede healing and human connection even though it is an involuntary trauma response. I'm also interested in "the no contact" trend of Generation Z with their parents.

I'm also busy writing about other issues that I think are more compelling for me to cover in terms of the subject of narcissism: the psychology of their sycophants, common prejudices in narcissists and sycophants, the communication and filtering styles of narcissists, and what to do about the kinds of destructions narcissists wreak on society and on younger generations (is there hope for assimilation, or is the best strategy always "no contact" to protect society and other generations from destruction)?

And then there is the subject of "forgiveness" when it comes to narcissists and their destructions - it happens sometimes even without pressure from others or even pressure from within. It can take some survivors by surprise even.  So what is behind that?

And that's why I haven't published these more common traits of narcissism. You can also read them anywhere, on just about any blog on narcissism.

But first some compelling news: 

PRESENT STUDIES IN COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY LABS
ON SCAPEGOATS
AND HOPEFUL METHODOLOGIES FOR HEALING

There are some remarkable studies being performed in universities and college labs to get an understanding of how family scapegoats are being impacted in childhood. These studies are being run by all kinds of specialists in the medical field including neurologists, immunologists, rheumotologists, lymphologists, cardiovascular specialists, and so many others. Naturally psychiatrists, psychologists and trauma therapists are leading these experiments. 

What they are finding is that family scapegoats are showing that their autonomic nervous systems are being much more compromised (and destroyed) than originally considered by the mental health community and physicians. While it may not surprise any adult scapegoat, it surprised doctors how impacted these children were. 

As of the present day, most adult scapegoats and some child scapegoats are being treated with healing modalities meant for a broad spectrum of traumas from war, accidents, all kinds of child abuse, kidnapping, rape, trafficking, slavery, extreme forms of incarceration, and so on. This is such an array of types of trauma, and unfortunately, using the same forms of treatment for one form of trauma does not necessarily work for another form of trauma in all cases. For now, all of these forms of trauma get the same kinds of therapies. 

In America PTSD and CPTSD are still being lumped together as "PTSD" even though the chronic form (CPTSD) shows some dramatic differences from a one-time traumatic event (usually reserved for PTSD). European nations, in contrast with the U.S.A., recognize PTSD and CPTSD as distinct diagnoses formalized by The World Health Organization. Apparently the U.S.A. can't formalize it because too many physicians see it as a severe subset rather than a separate diagnosis. 

I'm not sure if that has been bungling research on child abuse victims or not. It's remarkable that studies weren't taking place on what child abuse does to all parts of the physical body of child victims until recent times. There have been a lot of studies about what it does to a child psychologically, and to the brains of children. Then what it did to some of the major organs followed in the 1990s, and very recent studies have unveiled what it does to the immune system. 

Certainly Bessel van der Kolk, the leading psychiatrist on trauma, has found that trauma affects the entire body, and his team of trauma experts keep coming out with more and more studies about what trauma does to various parts of the body, even in the first seconds a traumatic event occurs, so those discoveries led other teams to study what has not been discovered yet, even going into specific types of traumatic events, and in this case, scapegoating children.

Anyway, this research is taking place in labs now. And what is more, some studies are not just being done on any child abuse victims; they are being done specifically on scapegoats and for scapegoats, the ones who endure systematic abuse from a parent or caretaker on a regular basis while growing up, and sometimes from their entire family.  

There are obviously standards that have to be reached to be considered "a scapegoat" of your parent and family, and a lot of those standards come from Rebecca Mandeville's book, "Rejected, Blamed and  Shamed". It is a book meant for therapists to help them diagnose whether an adult has the experiences and symptoms that would define them as a "family scapegoat", and for child abuse survivors to help them decipher whether they are a scapegoat or not, and then legitimize that they've been scapegoated by their family of origin if they can say "yes" to the questionnaire in the book. 

I have scoured enough child abuse forums to know that EMDR, CBT, CPT, PE, Somatic exercises and pharmeceuticals, and even controversial therapies like CBD, low dose LSD, Ketamine, and Ibogaine do not work for all scapegoats, the healing methods used for people who have been traumatized. When the trauma is too pervasive, too deep, or too intense during childhood, it seems that sometimes nothing works. 

Case in point: I met a woman on-line. Her case was this: 2 parents with all of the symptoms and traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and an older brother who sexually abused her throughout her childhood. She was dissociating a lot during episodes with her family and ended up with Dissociative Identity Disorder (what used to be called "Multiple Personality Disorder" - which according to a team studying this disorder at Harvard these days, is not so uncommon after all - more about this in later posts, I hope).

She was scapegoated by her family.

Her family took her brother's side, and at 20, she was rejected by her nuclear family. Another family member that was not part of the nuclear family put up money for her to get therapy. It was during therapy that she decided she wanted to be a therapist herself, so she took out loans to get a degree in trauma therapy, and eventually learned the techniques of EMDR and some of the other ones I've mentioned. 

Anyway, after around thirty years of going to therapy and administering therapy to others, she felt that she could never heal, that no therapies had worked on her, that she would always feel broken and dealing with amnesia, severe depression, and splitting between alters, and short-changing her patients because she couldn't heal herself. Also, organizing anything in her life was extremely difficult. She didn't remember where she put things (because of the alters), and sometimes, even if rarely, displaced her patients' folders. She found that one of her alters had contacted her family even, and her older brother who had abused her for all of those years, which she experienced as a horror in terms of her main alters, and in terms of advising her patients to limit or break with their abusers for the duration of trauma therapy. 

Anyway, she said she found she couldn't live with herself doing these things to "f" up her life. She said she was in chronic emotional pain all of the time. The on-going hypervigilence she found herself in when "betraying myself", and the alters taking charge of the betrayals, she said she couldn't live through any more of it. "I can't even trust myself! Most people don't have to worry about that, but when you have alters, self betrayal is a big problem! And I can't go back to my family to take a break, or get help like other people can because they are so much worse than the worst of my alters!"

There is nothing I could say to her to get her to re-think her decision to be lethally injected in Europe because she had tried everything she could to heal. Every therapy had already been tried. And then I never heard from her again. 

What a tragic story!

She had been brought up in a time when Child Protective Services, established in 1974, could be functionally ineffective, especially in its earliest days. Between 1962 through 1967, the mental health establishment had discovered that child abuse was producing some unacceptable outcomes for society and for families to the point where there needed to be a nationwide way to protect children. Here is the Google AI version of that (partial, through the same link, and copied in blue): 

The mental health establishment concluded that child abuse requires protective orders because overwhelming empirical evidence shows childhood maltreatment causes long-lasting psychiatric, physical, and developmental damage, often resulting in severe adult mental disorders and high mortality risks. Protective orders are necessary to immediately interrupt violent cycles, prevent further trauma, and offer legal safe boundaries.

The article also discusses emotional abuse and neglect. 

Anyway, not to get off-topic too much, it is clear that for the worst cases of scapegoating, there is nowhere to turn. While abusers are often satisfied with seeing a "freeze response" from their victims because it's not challenging them and no one is running away from them, and freezing can look like "submitting" or "capitulating" (even with a devastated facial expression on the victim), it is doing untold damage to the victim. This is where an individuated, integrated, authentic budding personality with preferences, likes, dislikes, interests and opinions, goes to die. The freeze response is also where dissociation begins to happen, and where the compartmentalization of events, even internal ones, begin to splinter into what seems like more autonomous episodes. 

With the new therapies being invented for the branch of trauma survivors one would call "family scapegoats", some of these issues are being addressed, and they are finding preliminary results to be "extremely effective".

Wow, some hope! That's great!

However, some therapists who have been privy to the preliminary results, are going out and saying they have the ability "to heal scapegoats and the particular kinds of trauma they have". So, I received a warning a couple of days ago that the results have not been officially concluded and the study is incomplete, and not to trust any therapist who claims they can heal the kind of trauma that scapegoats have. I guess there are the unscrupulous in every profession. 

I have no idea what is in store, but I would think one of the more stubborn aspects of trauma to treat are the folks who dissociate. Again, it's involuntary, so how did they solve it, if they solved it? I'm eager to find out. 

There is also something in the works in the labeling, something slightly different than the P.T.S.D. letters, but which have a lot in common with P.T.S.D. lettering too, which again would be used to diagnose scapegoats in particular, so that the scapegoat's medical team is more sensitive to their needs and requirements, and are offering more effective ways to deal with their particular traumas, than say, someone who has been in a car crash. 

As with CPTSD, there are likenesses in common with PTSD, but also some differences. 

For me, this is an interesting period to be alive, and I hope I see what is in store. 

In the meantime, if you want to explore trauma therapies that are being used now, for the most part they are really effective for the bulk of scapegoat trauma survivors. 

Here are some books you may want to check out too: 

"The Body Keeps the Score" - by Bessel ver der Kolk
- available on Amazon

"Rejected, Shamed and Blamed" - by Rebecca C. Mandeville
- available on Amazon

"Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A GUIDE AND MAP FOR RECOVERING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA" - by Pete Walker 

- available on Amazon

"Growing Up as the Scapegoat to a Narcissistic Parent: A Guide to Healing" - by Jay Reid (Amazon)

"How Scapegoats Can Heal from Narcissistic Abuse: 3 Steps Towards Compassion, Protection & Freedom" - by Jay Reid (Amazon)

And if you want to know some of why women are scapegoated more than men, this is a book I highly recommend:
The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help (How to End Domestic Violence, Mental and Emotional Abuse, and Sexual Harassment) - by Jackson Katz (Amazon) 

ONE OF PEEP'S BLOG POSTS
(and searching for what ails you to see if it might have something to do with PTSD)

Peep, as I call her, runs the blog, Five Hundred Pound Peeps as an anonymous writer. She writes on a number of subjects, including posts about and for ACONs, lymphedema and lipedema (which can often be mistaken for obesity), poverty from the status of an ACON on Disability SSI, politics and the economic challenges for the younger generations. 

Anyway, she wrote this post on a lot of her health conditions, and I responded.

After I published this post, I found a video by Dr. Ramani that addressed health issues when you are around antagonistic people, or "hasslers". What great timing for this video! Anyway, I also imbedded that video below. 

Regardless, I thought I'd share with you the response I gave Peep in regards to a lot of her health problems, so that if you have any of these particular medical issues yourself, and you are also an ACON, you may be able to attribute it to PTSD (copied here in green):

We have talked about this before, but PTSD can cause significant weight gain:

https://www.google.com/search?q=can+ptsd+cause+significant+weight+gain

There is a strong link between PTSD and Lupus:

https://www.google.com/search?q=can+you+get+lupus+from+ptsd

PTSD can significantly increase the risk of getting Type 2 diabetes:

https://www.google.com/search?q=can+ptsd+cause+diabetes

PTSD can significantly increase the risk of getting allergies:

https://www.google.com/search?q=PTSD+can+significantly+increase+the+risk+of+getting+allergies

"physical or emotional trauma can act as a trigger for the onset or worsening of lipedema in genetically predisposed individuals.":

https://www.google.com/search?q=can+trauma+cause+lipedema

PTSD can significantly damage the endocrine system:

https://www.google.com/search?q=can+ptsd+damage+the+endocrine+system

Being an ACON causes so much undue stress ...

The point here is that PTSD (or CPTSD - the disorder generally relegated to scapegoats) often is going to impact the body in some adverse way. 

If you are a survivor of child abuse, you can look up what ails you in the same way I did for Peep and see if there are any correlations with the PTSD or CPTSD that you are experiencing. Since the Google search is American, using the word PTSD in its search is likely to get you better results for your questions because American psychiatrists still have not recognized CPTSD as "different" from PTSD (compared to European countries as I wrote at the beginning of this post). 

ANOTHER OF PEEP'S BLOG POSTS
(a discussion about leaving 30 percent of Gen Zers out of their parents' wills and trusts)

Peep likes to see what is going on with parents who have children they are estranged from. 

Apparently the sites she sees are full of wrath, with statements like: "How dare our children 'go no contact!' Even if it comes from a therapist, it's a bad way to treat those who have sacrificed their lives to bring up these entitled brats! Such ungrateful children! Leave them out of your Wills and give the money to charity! Teach them a lesson! Get a Trust because if you leave a Will, these kids are so selfish, they will contest it!" 

Thirty percent of Gen Zers are estranged from a parent, so a lot of charities will become absolutely flooded with money apparently. 

I haven't seen these boards on social media myself, nor do I want to. I have researched enough about narcissism to not be surprised by any of this. However, they do reveal these underlying issues:

* "Teach a lesson that will hurt them." - never works to establish or re-establish a bond, and it does not teach conflict resolution.  
* "Brats!" - an insult generally reserved for underage children. 
* "Ungrateful" - a "give-away" word that you may be dealing with a narcissist. It's also a cheap way not to have to think about what a child is going through. Narcissists use this phrase on children too much in forums (and it's about the only thing they have to say about their children), and because of that, it is eye-rolling. There are only so many punishments and pain a child will endure before running away. The phrase teaches nothing of value except that it puts all responsibility and blame on the child for the rift and none on the parent. 
* Narcissists will do the bare minimum in raising their children. 
   Narcissists are generally more interested in status and money than their children. 
   Narcissistic mothers are more likely to work outside the home, looking for high status jobs, than staying home to raise children.
   So narcissistic mothers are more likely to be working outside the home. 
   I'm not inferring anything here, but Peep talks about her days of growing up as a "latch-key kid". In Peep's case, she talks about her generation being more "latch-key-relegated" than past generations. Apparently they were kids who spent more time bringing up themselves than being in the company of their parents.
   She was also a baby-sitter and dinner planner and preparer, according to what she wrote in her post, at nine years old when her parents were out working. Some "sacrifice" is expected when raising kids, and there is also an expected sacrifice by the parents to have the kids' run the household, especially when "latch-key".
   Also latch-key kids who feel forced to provide for the family don't feel as valued as children whose parents sacrificed their "time" to be with their kids. So what kid wants to be with a parent who doesn't value them? And devaluation of children is, again, a narcissistic trait. 

And frankly, all of the endless copy-cat narratives about this subject miss the mark of why children leave their parents. What kid actually thinks: "I am ungrateful, and that's why I left." "Ungrateful brat" is also self serving. And it doesn't get to the truth of any matter, not even close. It shuts out the real issues (a type of silencing of the child) and it shows a high propensity of these parents to control the narrative in such a way that it totally benefits them, with no benefit to the child, and totally wipes out any of their perspectives: "Vilify the child, never let them be right, ban all communication, batten down the hatches, and punish them all!!! Arggh!!" 

If you read the adult children's versions, there are major differences. They are usually something along these lines:
   "I tried my best with my parent(s). I'm not after their money, but when I have 60 - 80 hour work weeks with very little to show for it except a one bedroom apartment, I don't have time for the kinds of things they want from me. And frankly, what they want from me is time that is not productive, like arguing endlessly about a slight they feel, or telling me how to run my life, or gaslighting me, or insulting me, or demanding that I do things around their house. With the long hours I work? I can't survive the load I am dealing with and them at the same time. So I don't see my parents any more. Frankly, I feel traumatized by them, and that nothing matters to them except what they want. Something had to give." 

So let's say the government can't take care of the enormous amount of Gen Zers when they are old. Perhaps the government will look to the incredibly wealthy charities these parents have endowed them with to provide financial assistance. It could happen - after the administrators try to give themselves a big fat raise to distribute the funds.

The cynicism is intentional. 

A STORY:
WHEN HUMOR IS IGNORED

This is about a couple, I will call Mr. and Mrs. 

Mr. and Mrs. were/are both family scapegoats. They are a " happy couple", and love the peace and tranquility that they find with each other, and that they have built together.  

One thing that Mr. finds is his wife not listening to him at times. He doesn't know why, and she doesn't exactly know why either except she says she "lives in her own head" a lot of the time, a common condition for scapegoats.

However, for important matters, the Mrs. decided that he should use the term, "Breaker, breaker!" just in case she's with the thoughts in her own mind rather than listening to him, and in order to get her full attention. It works. 

Anyway, they went for a walk one day and she again blanked out on him and what he was saying (meaning her own thoughts took over so that she didn't hear him - also a sign of dissociation). 

He was in a joking, jolly mood, and talking about how dogs were going to "log on" to the internet to get what they wanted, and a whole story ensued with a lot of quips and double entendres. 

His wife was nodding her head in agreement to these wild tales, but she had only heard the part where dogs were going to "log on". 

After he was done, he asked her, "Do you agree with me on that?" 

She answered "Yes." 

He asked her again, "Oh, no! Do you actually agree with me?" 

She answered, "Yes, I totally agree with you. I already said 'yes'."

He asked, "What is going on with you? You got lost in your own thoughts again, didn't you?" 

She answered, "Yes, I'm sorry. I did. I'm embarassed and didn't want to admit it."

He asked, "Why does this keep happening? Am I boring you to such an extent that you switch off?" 

She answered, "No. It's not you. It really isn't." 

He said, "Well explain what's happening." 

She answered, "I really don't know all of the answers, but I'm thinking it has to do with PTSD." 

He said, "I have PTSD too, but I don't do that. So why do you think you're doing that and not me? And why are you blanking out on me? I love you and I'm devoted to you. There isn't a reason to blank out, is there?" 

She answered, "No, absolutely not. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the abuse for you ended abruptly when you were thirteen years old. There were certainly gaps of better times for me, but the on-going trajectory was they wanted me hurt, and tethered to the family. That's all I can think of as to the reason why this is different for you than it is for me." 

He said, "But where did you go while I was telling all of these jokes?" 

She answered, "I noticed my thoughts got really loud right after you started talking about the dogs logging on to the internet."

He said, "You mean intrusive thoughts? Like hypervigilent experiences of worrying about whether your family still wants to attack you?" 

She answered, "Nothing like that. I wasn't thinking about them at all. I have intrusive thoughts all of the time about all kinds of things, like how I'm going to tackle a room in our house in terms of organizing it and clearing it out in some sort of perfectly satisfying way that it won't ever get that messy again." 

He said, "But why are you blanking out when I'm joking with you? Why would joking be scary for you?" 

She answered, "I'm not afraid of the joking, at least I don't think I am. I'm not exactly sure why. Let me think about this for awhile." 

When she thought about it for awhile, she said, "My mother used to lie to me a lot, and gaslight me, and try to convince me that everything was my fault. I know I blanked out on her a lot during those times. I'm pretty sure that she decided I was crazy based on these episodes, because for all I know, I might have even said 'I believe you' as an auto-pilot response, just like I did with you, because not to believe her lies was to invite her wrath. So telling a wild tale about dogs being on the internet might have been a trigger, and the mind then reacts as if it is a lie, and it's like "We have to flood the mind zone with something else!" I do know that my thoughts felt loud. I know it's involuntary to dissociate, so I don't know what to do about this. I'm okay most of the time, right?" 

He answered, "You are, but you're doing it more than you maybe should. I just worry about you doing this with the wrong person, that's all. I'm still wondering why I don't do this if it is part of PTSD." 

She said, "Well, the abuse was different. Your mother's abuse was violence, to whip you, and kick you and to make you bleed. She didn't gaslight you a lot, right?" 

He said, "No, that wasn't in her lexicon, though she was convinced everything was my fault when my sister and I were at odds. However, I was never pressured to say everything was my fault. She assumed it was my fault without investigating anything because she had the attitude that boys hit girls, that boys tell girls what to do, that boys need to be taken down a notch or two. My sister was the main instigator of lying to appear innocent of something, so she wouldn't get punished and so that I would instead. She did the sinning and I would pay for it. So, in a way ---."

She said, "But you weren't constantly being lied to by your mother, right?" 

He answered, "Not lying directly. She believed what my sister told her. I guess that's not really a lie.  Anyway, I understand what you're saying, and it's good to know why there are differences between your version of PTSD and mine. I'll have to be sure to be in touch with you and what you're going through when I'm joking." 

Perhaps you can see that the differences matter in terms of treatment for PTSD. 

New edit on 4/27/26: the video: 

VIDEO

"Is a Narcissist Making You Age Faster? The Science Says Yes"
by psychologist, Dr. Ramani Durvasula: 

THE PROFESSIONAL PAPER THAT THIS VIDEO REFERENCES

Negative social ties as emerging risk factors for accelerated

aging, inflammation, and multimorbidity 
by Byungkyu Lee, Gabriele Ciciurkaite, Siyun Peng, Colter Mitchell, and Brea L. Perry

And an article in The Atlantic Magazine that talks about this study:

There’s a Name for the People Who Drain You

“Hasslers” make life more difficult—and we can’t escape them. - by Olga Khazan for The Atlantic

Note: this is a different study than the one I talked about earlier in this post. 

FOUND ON FACEBOOK

An Update: New Studies in the Field of Trauma Recovery and Reactions, 500 Peeps Latest Blog, and Some Other Thoughts on Sycophants in Today's Politics

 
From NICABM (features Pat Ogden, PhD, Stephen Porges, PhD, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Janina Fisher, PhD, Kathy Steele, MN, CS, Deb Dana, LCSW, Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD   and Thema Bryant, PhD):

Treating trauma is some of the most demanding, complex work we do.

Eye contact can feel unsafe. Relationships can trigger survival responses. Clients can become overwhelmed and dissociate before they even begin processing their trauma.

That’s why we’ve gathered 18 of the world’s top trauma experts to share the latest insights on working with trauma in this Advanced Master Program.

When trauma takes hold, the nervous system goes into survival mode — trapping clients in patterns of fear, dissociation, and shame.

But new research is revealing groundbreaking strategies to help clients rewire their trauma response and break free from these cycles.

Join 18 leading trauma experts, including Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Janina Fisher, PhD, and Stephen Porges, PhD, in this advanced training.

One of the things these experts found out is that trauma survivors, and especially people with PTSD, don't do well in "talk therapy". There is a tendency to feel "flooded" in a talk therapy session - where you can hear the advice of the therapist for awhile, but then cognition starts to fall off, and then you can dissociate. This is especially true for people who feel the freeze response (fawn, fight, flee, and freeze being the main trauma responses). 

The freeze response is actually the most unhealthy of the trauma responses and that is where people (or clients) can dissociate or begin to have dissociative experiences. It starts out with minor dissociative experiences and then as traumatic experiences multiply, the dissociative experiences multiply too and also become deeper (i.e. where cognition of current events goes off-line in more extreme ways). 

The freeze response is particularly notable for child abuse victims because the fight and flee responses are more or less impossible for smaller children - and child abusers punish a child for having these responses anyway. I would also argue that the fawn response is not possible for children given the scapegoat role either as the caretaker rejects the fawning, or insinuates that the child doesn't mean it. So the only response that is left is the freeze response. 

However, this group of mental health experts also came up with other trauma responses, notably the Collapse and Submit Response, the Please and Appease Response, and the Attach and Cry for Help Response. 

I'd bet the Collapse and Submit Response as well as the Attach and Cry for Help Response have a lot in common with the Freeze Response in that they can lead to dissociation and an inability to be present at all times in conversations, and especially when lectured at, verbally abused, or told to do something that is wrong, or unethical, or repeatedly told to do things that you don't want to do (over years). 

The freeze response isn't just thoughts running through your head like "I don't know what to do" or "Nothing I do works", but it also has many, many physical ramifications where your ability to respond at all goes off-line. What responses you do have left feel frozen too: frozen screams, freezing up when you are touched, freezing up on choices you have to make (for the "mortal fear" of making the wrong choice), missing opportunities because you freeze up on responding, even thoughts freezing up (like becoming obsessive, or not being able to let a thought, or experience, or feeling die off). 

The freeze response is definitely one of the worst trauma responses in terms of what it does to the body and brain, especially for children exhibiting these responses. 

Because a child cannot express outwardly what he or she is feeling and because they are often silenced by the abuser too, the feelings have to be stuffed, to stay within the body, and this is where we find that it wreaks havoc on the head, heart, stomach, immune system, and muscles primarily, and probably other parts of the body too. 

It is one reason why scapegoats often prefer other trauma responses when they are finally able to do so (like in teen years or adulthood) such as running away, or fighting it out with lots of defenses, arguments, analysis and explanations, or being rebellious, or taking substances to get out of obsessive depressive thinking styles, feelings of utter exhaustion and retreating (often misunderstood as laziness), or feeling disgust for their torturers. 

Scapegoats also have a lot more ability to seek out real love than a golden child because narcissists most often neglect or discard their scapegoat children and those children often use those times to explore, and most often don't return, or return in a way where they are shoved back into their old role. But let's face it: most family scapegoats are expected to be scapegoats for life, thus most of them find their own way in the world.

Fawning isn't very effective for scapegoats because people who torture know that the amount of torture they inflict doesn't deserve a fawning response, so they suspect that it is "fake fawning". Fakeness  enrages narcissists, of course, even though they are a lot more fake and inauthentic than most everyone else on the planet. They figure you are them when you fawn. 

Freezing is the response of last resort (for golden children who mostly fawn, they can find themselves suddenly on the wrong side of a narcissist where fawning isn't producing good results, and may also use the freeze response, but it is usually only temporary, whereas for scapegoats, they may be reacting via the freeze response throughout their childhood and beyond).

Anyway, freezing is often an anxiety response, where the cortisol levels go up and cause stress to the body. Sometimes golden children will keep trying all kinds of fawning and flattering responses to get their systems and the narcissist to become more stable, as they were before. 

One of the leading trauma experts, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, found that trauma effects the entire brain, not just the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex and amygdala as has been touted for decades. Granted those areas of the brain are effected the most, but some parts of the brain become over-active, and other parts simply go off-line or don't function like they should, or used to. 

I always thought that had to be the case, but I was otherwise told it wasn't. It was great to finally be confirmed about what I knew from my own body and no longer be living in a state of denial about it. 

When I was around "bad people" (as I used to call them in childhood), I always got "whole head headaches" afterwards. Not that this proved then or later, that the whole brain was effected, but the physical ramifications were hard to miss.

The headaches could be very mild or severe and I always thought it gave me a gauge as to how dangerous or toxic a person was (although I didn't know the word "toxic" when I was a kid - I referred to it more as "too many nerves in my head that are making my head hurt"). I had plenty of other symptoms too including stomach aches, and a profound lack of sleep. And the lack of sleep also played a role in keeping the headaches going. 

And even when I had breaks from trauma-inducing experiences, there began to be a kind of feedback loop where the headaches produced a lack of sleep and the lack of sleep produced the headaches, and all of it made me uncomfortable living in my own body for a time until the symptoms could subside.

Anyway, when the whole brain is effected, I'd bet the entire body is effected too as another break-through study and course from NIACBM includes How to Work with the Limbic System to Reverse the Physiological Imprint of Trauma. 

Another hurdle that many victims of child abuse can relate to are feelings of "I'm not good enough" often transferred from a parent who does not love his or her child, or expects perfectionism in deeds, thoughts, facial expressions and looks, and especially if the child is rejected by a parent over these kinds of things. Parental "coldness" (not caring how you feel) is another way you can experience feelings of worthlessness. 

There is a new course for that too (mainly for therapists to get further education, but there is no harm in studying what is going on with beliefs like this). 

The course is called Practical Strategies for Working with a Client's Feelings of Worthlessness, also by NIACBM. 

What I have found most interesting is that feelings of worthlessness can effect the neuroplasticity of the brain. 

So much is happening in trauma research, types of trauma reactions and trauma therapies, and this is where I'd eventually like to take this blog, although I've started to discuss it in many of my most recent posts. It is a whole other research subject, and more interesting to me personally, but also tied to how to deal with abuse and the long term effects of it. 

500 HUNDRED POUND PEEP'S BLOG POST
ON SCAPEGOATS AND POVERTY
AND HOW SO MANY SCAPEGOATS ARE NOT TAUGHT LIFE SKILLS INSIDE THEIR FAMILY
AND ARE INSTEAD LAUGHED AT AND BLAMED FOR THE POVERTY THEY FACE INSTEAD

I had planned on writing a blog post myself on this subject, but Peeps, as I call her in public anyway, decided to publish hers before I could get mine done. That is what happened for another post on Do Scapegoats Rebel (one that I planned on publishing with her but still haven't totally finished).  

Yes, there are a lot of things distracting me at this time, so I understood her need to publish before I could get mine done. 

Anyway, I think her post on poverty is a really brilliant and much needed article and it is a subject that hasn't really been explored much, in research groups or through interviews, or even in terms of talking about individual experiences except in forums for survivors of child abuse and minorly in therapy groups. And why not, since most scapegoats experience it at least once in their lives? 

We know that narcissistic parents want to hurt their scapegoat children (most scapegoat children are abused and conspired against throughout their entire childhood unless the golden child screws up in some way that drives the parent to be angry enough to pit the golden child against the scapegoat child in a contest for Mommy or Daddy's love and attention). And what better way to hurt the scapegoat child than to thrust him or her into a black abyss of poverty, especially right when they turn 18 and can legally be thrown away like so much trash (until, again, the golden child does something that the narcissistic parent does not like). In other words, if you are discarded in the early part of adulthood, or at age 18, as so many scapegoat adult children are, they may very well intend to groom you to live in poverty and to tolerate poverty, intentionally, especially if you grew up with parents who had enough money to feed you, but you were being underfed, if they had enough money to dress you, but you were either given rags or dirty clothes, ill-fitting clothes, or hopelessly out-of-date hand-me-downs so that you were bullied and teased at school over them, if you were isolated from the rest of your family members so that they could not hear your side of the story and automatically assumed you were at fault for the absurd amount of punishments you received, and if you were treated like a second class citizen to your sibling(s). 

In addition, you were not taught how to traverse the world of adulthood, so you had no idea how to survive in it. 

I personally had to read her post in two parts as it starts out like a Russian novel and builds to most of  what scapegoats live through. 

Some of the passages I found to be particularly relevant and stood out for me are these:

* She talks about how ACONs (Adult Children of Narcissists) aren't taught how to live independently so they don't end up in poverty, about how they are mocked when they are a child ("You'll never live in a beautiful place like that!") instead of encouraged to do well "So that you'll end up with a beautiful house like that."
   "Slamming an ACON's self esteem makes it hard to learn important life lessons like this. Instead you are either laughed at for thinking living in a nice home is out of your reach, or taught to please and flatter your narcissistic parent as the most important lesson of your life."

* She talks about being an art teacher and director of art at a summer camp and why she chose it over other careers. I found this fascinating because that was largely my life too as well as selling in galleries and art centers.  

* I found this passage right out of the playbook of many ACONs:
     I saw it with Aunt Scapegoat, they seemed to derive joy listing off her horrific medical problems while clucking their tongues. Her poverty too often was the stuff of legends..."she hoarded food you know!", "Grandma had to buy all her clothes!'' "Her trailer was full of trash!" As a child, I lived in terror of ending up as poor as her, as she was put down constantly in front of me.  It would only occur to me later, that my mother had the means to make her life a lot better instead of letting her sink into such extreme poverty. I would end up as poor, though unlike her, we got some better working class years and her level of poverty was definitely worse.

*   I found this passage to be true to my own experience of talking to scapegoats with disabilities:
     I got into a discussion, talking about this issue. Family wealth for the scapegoat is not protection from poverty. One guy told me online on reddit that they should study what happens to the financial security of the disabled who come from better off families?
     He wrote: Do children of wealthy families with disabilities or visible abnormalities have a measurable difference in financial security relative to siblings, similarly-aged people from middle/upper class families, and comparable peers from poor families?
     He said that someone should do a graduate thesis on this, it would be an interesting sociological topic. I was in a disabled group, and a group for autistic adults [on Zoom] and a group for those with serious pain disorders and chronic disabilities [on Zoom]. I  did note that family support for the people I met, was far far higher. Many of the autistic adults lived at home with parents including 2 men at my level of autism, who were well into their 50s. There was a few married women like me, they encountered career problems and some were physically disabled, but they had supportive families. No one related to my level of poverty. It surprised me. One woman did live in subsidized housing but had a loving family which probably bolstered her feelings of independence.  In the pain disorder group, one lady who had lupus related problems but was still employed, lived with her mother and it seemed to be a positive situation. In the disability group, I met a man who lived with his brother, and another man who lived with his mother, who were locals and had about the same level of autism as me [what was referred to as Aspergers for decades] The latter man was very overweight at my size but he didn't have the same health problems and could still walk, function, drive and work.
     Many of these people had challenges, and in the case of the autistics, career troubles, were common, some did work very hard, and one man did volunteer work during his unemployed periods. Their families seemed to help them. The fellow fat man admitted to me he did face some judgment from his family but others seemed cared about and looked after. Their challenges were not used to reject them as people, like what happens with someone with narcissistic parents. My disabilities were seen as "my fault". All of them. The weight issues complicated that but they had no mercy for anything else including deafness and breathing problems. ...
     ... Some of the disabled people in my groups got really sick, and their families looked out for them. Sometimes it was hard for me to hear about because my situation was so opposite. I have a husband who has looked out for me so am not saying my glass is empty because he's definitely stepped up for decades. There's a lot of disabled people with serious health problems on their own. I get scared for them. It was just interesting to see the different attitudes of more loving families towards disabled members. It's pretty sick that narcissistic families will get out the hammer on people with serious health problems.
     But outside of illness, how many scapegoats find themselves in the streets? No home to go to? I dare say there's probably a lot of abuse victims who end up homeless who end up as "orphans" out in a harsh world. Social workers, churches and the world assume everyone has a family. This simply isn't true. For those of us without one, there's no one to turn to. No one has our backs. I learned the hard way, going no contact many years ago, no one in the family cared that I was gone. During my most extreme poverty in my 20s, no one cared about me. I missed meals [yeah I know that's ironic as fat as I am] and went without needed possessions, there were times I had literally nothing but ripped up clothes to wear.  ...
     

* This passage, I think, is super relevant to whether you can "make it" as an adult (trauma symptoms impacting your health and life):
      ... First and foremost due to ACE scores, stress, scapegoats can have health problems.You are on high alert, never can relax, your parents never let you sleep or even physically toss you on the floor from your bed. This wrecks children's health adding hormonal and obesity problems especially. As a child I never could relax or sleep. I was always on my parents schedule, for years I had severe insomnia, I never felt safe enough to fall asleep I always had to be on my guard.
     As your physical health is decimated, your mental health is at risk. Severe stress, and trauma all take their toll. Some people will get DID, disassocation, PTSD/CPTSD, anxiety disorders, depression and more. I have talked about this very much just here and there, but my anxiety disorders were very severe. They included almost daily panic attacks, and a feeling of "unease" and fear at all times. I have been diagnosed with PTSD/CPTSD by three different therapists, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and OCD issues during my life. My anxiety disorders were not career enhancers. I had to learn to hide my worries and anxiety because I realized my "neuroticism" made people angry. There were years, I was checking things for hours and having to hide this from roommates and others. My anxiety is in a far better place now, I still struggle but it's nowhere as severe as it was.
     Sometimes at work, I could barely keep it together. No one during my student teaching when I had to move back home knew I was going from working with kids all day to having people scream at and threaten me and I could barely get any food either, which oddly made me fatter. I saw some old pictures from myself from the 1980s, and I'm always cringing, I always look like I'm ready to dodge an incoming hit. Well I had to be ready to duck at any time.  ... 

* Super relate-able:
     ... Mean Parents Don't Teach Their Children Anything
     One thing many ACONs attest to is the lack of life skills, one does not acquire much knowledge from narcissists, they chase their kids out of the kitchen or garage and slap at kids who don't become instant experts. Dad's good at the stockmarket? He'll never tell you it's secrets. Dad's good at fixing cars? While he's screaming at you about being lazy and to hand the tools over quicker, he'll never give you the chance to try and fix it yourself. Mom's good at cooking? She certain doesn't want anyone to outshine her, so you don't learn one cooking trick. You are given low knowledge tasks like whipping the mashed potatoes or wiping the counter. The only way I found out what my mother actually put in recipes was by finding her old handwritten cookbook in a notebook.  Paying bills? That remains a mystery. Narcissistic parents won't tell you things like what the monthly budget is. You won't learn how to write checks, or buy a car or rent an apartment unless you are one of those lucky kids who gets a life skills class. At the same time you remain hopelessly ignorant, they get angry at you for not knowing things but then still don't tell you anything!
     They want you to keep you helpless so you are dependent on them and don't want you able to stand on your own two feet. They desire your failure so you are easily controlled. They don't want you financially independent. Some narcissistic parents will even sometimes give a scapegoat a little money or help, it's random, and for control to keep you in the game but you'll never see them give help, like with a job even if they have the means to do so. You aren't taught how to function and often your attempts to gain more independent and financial independence are thwarted. They tell you to pay high rent as you desperately try and save money to get out on your own. They ignore your health problems while telling you to work hours, they  would never dream of doing, such as when I had a 7am-11pm schedule every day during student teaching.
     This is a common way scapegoats are sabotaged. Many of us grow up and then realize with horror the depth of life lessons and practical know-how that were denied us. We don't know how to do anything. My struggle with life skills continues, some of this can be autism, but right now I am doing calculus in my head, to even figure out how to pay 5-6 different medical bills, the electric bill and how we are going to afford food next week. I keep an entire notebook dedicated to survival. It has housing lists in there, everything turned out be HUD programs we don't qualify for except for the one I am on the list of or they were in very bad areas or ones off the bus lines. Lists of where all the food pantries are, and what day of the month they are open, the number and address of the car repair charity place, and where one can get free furniture and clothing. When I was young I didn't even know where to go to get charity or how to utilize a food pantry.
     Yes. My parents were upper middle class. We lived in a neighborhood of million dollar homes where people hired live in nanny's housekeepers and or at least a cleaning lady on the regular.  Our house was more humble but at 5-6 bedrooms it was very large and there were other large homes around us and the million-dollar homes were just down the street. The country club was right around the corner from the house I went to in high school. Many ACONS are people who descended the ladder. The life I grew up in was not the life I got later. I was unprepared for what awaited me. I was prepared for a culture I never would live in as an adult. 

There is so much more to her article that will ring true to any scapegoat who had to live through a period of poverty. I think the very personal experience she writes about is decidedly better than what I have to say on this subject, although I do have some more statistics to add to the discussion. 

I only lived through a little less than two years of poverty myself from age 19 - 21 or so, and it was super challenging. The lack of food was one major issue (my meals were mainly "unpopular vegetables" with a little butter on them because they were cheaper than anything else: eggplant, turnips, rutabagas, those sorts of vegetables ... and only one meal a day so that I wouldn't run out). I also had trouble with the bureaucracy at the food stamps office where they required me to get a refrigerator - I think you can understand why it was impossible for me to retain one. So I went without help or food. And I was working and going to college at this time. 

As for my career in art and art teaching, I did have that in common with Peep. Was it a good career to choose for someone like me who was trying to rise out of poverty? 

Maybe not, but I thought it was at the time because when I was 18, I lived in a seaside tourist town where I met a potter who was not only able to live on the money he made from his sales, but support a wife and send two children to college. I don't think that is possible to do today unless you have a good trust fund from rich parents or grandparents, or are teaching in addition to making pottery, or you are a "star potter" with a huge following. 

Also at age 20, I learned about Camille Claudel and wondered if that was a warning sign for me. Beatrice Wood served as another warning for me in later years. Over the decades, having met many, many female artists, I have learned that most of the successful ones in my field are either hated or resented by their families (birth family, that is). Many have found solace and contentment in their marriages and in their children, but so many of them feel like outcasts of their family of origin.

Many of these artists complain that they feel they have to "turn off their talent", or "turn off their authentic selves" or "turn off the beauty in their work and focus on what's ugly in their pieces, or what's not working" or "turn off that they are artists at all" or pretend not to be as successful as they are in their art career around their family at least. Very odd, and something I'd like to explore a little deeper. 

Granted there is something cultural about critiquing art and artists as compared to most other professions, so that definitely holds some sway in terms of how visual artists are treated, but I find that the rate of alienation between female artists and their birth families to be alarming and severe, especially among fantasy artists, surreal-art artists and statement-oriented expressionist artists.

Female artists who practice abstract art, landscape art, art for textiles, artists who paint "cute animals", or flowers, or pretty young women in gardens mostly seem "safe" from alienation comparatively. I am trying to figure out why. 

At any rate, as in early childhood and early adulthood when I was a scrapper (looked hard for the minimum to survive very adverse childhood experiences), I was also a scrapper as an artist. My catapult into the art world was in Neo-expressionism or what I call "statement art", but I couldn't make it in that alone, and "something had to give". In other words, Neo-expressionism requires a nest egg, or fantastic luck, or a trust fund to start a career in it, to get into the museums that show this kind of work, so since I realized that, I "scrapped" together an art career with art teaching, being a curator, a studio manager, art director at a summer camp, display chair-person, entered local shows where "statement art" is not accepted and where landscapes, "pretty pictures" and abstract art is accepted instead, a greeting card business, a graphic arts business doing advertisements, creating Etsy and Zibbet banners for other artists, and later website design with my husband where we made and maintained websites for authors, artists, a museum, and others. I also performed music on the weekends, and practiced music in the evenings for upcoming gigs. 

It's probably not an exaggeration that I worked 70 hours a week at the very, very least. 

I think most artists and art teachers have to work these kinds of hours. 

From talking with Peeps, her life went largely in the same direction, but being disabled with many challenging medical issues stopped her from insane schedules. It also put her into poverty. 

I can't help but think that her life would have been even more like mine had she not been so ill. 

Anyway, a post on poverty and scapegoats will appear one of these days (and also another proper link to her post besides the one above), but it won't reveal much more of my own personal details than I have written here. 

SOME THOUGHTS SINCE THE INAUGURATION
OF A NEW PRESIDENT IN THE UNITED STATES
AND TRUMP'S DISMANTLING OF SO MANY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

What a time it has been since the second inauguration of Mr. Trump! Like so many Americans, we are trying to navigate our way through chaotic policies, the whiplashes of high tariffs followed by taking them off, a stock market and government employees gone crazy with deep losses and sometimes gains, the higher-than-usual prices at the grocery store, waiting to see if Trump invades Greenland, or Panama, or Canada, and wondering what will happen with Ukraine, Syria and Gaza. 

It's been hard to follow the flood of headlines since the inauguration, and even harder to understand why they are being done. Let's face it: the Democratic and Republican answers to much of what is going on is rooted in speculations as to what it will achieve, one party having a more dire interpretation to all of it, and the other party a more Pollyannish view. 

I tend not to have Pollyannish views when it comes to politicians as I believe many are there to have lifetime memberships in their appointed positions and will do anything, sway any way that is convenient to do so. Not that they are all like that, but I speculate that a majority are. 

I have talked about how disturbing the war in Ukraine has been for me personally. There isn't a day I don't worry about what's happening there since the war started and whether or not it will end up to be about Ukraine caving into and being swallowed up by Russia, or discussions between the United States and Russia about carving up the world into "empire building" where Trump might say, "You can have Ukraine, the Baltic States and Syria if I can have Canada, Panama and Greenland without interference from you", not that this is happening, but I wasn't the first person to think about that possibility.

These are the worst case scenarios, of course.

Then which child abuse survivor didn't feel triggered, or at least have a Deja Vu by watching President Trump and Vice President Vance shout down Zelenskyy at the Oval Office? 
* conspiracy theories (check): such as Zelenskyy wasn't really elected ("a dictator without elections" was what was said to him) as well as "gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III. And what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country ... " 
* Victim blaming: trying to convince Zelenskyy and the world that he and Ukraine are at fault for the war (check)
* Zelenskyy being silenced (check)
* Zelenskyy being talked or shouted over so that he couldn't respond (check)
* Zelenskyy told that he's "said enough" as though he's a little boy. (check - and by the way, wasn't this meeting supposed to be about negotiating? How can you negotiate with this going on?).
* Zelenskyy being told he's not expressing enough gratitude (check).
* Zelenskyy told he needs to apologize (check).
* Zelenskyy was asked why he doesn't wear a suit (check. As though everyone should dress in the same uniform - to reveal the sycophant side of themselves?).  

Certainly Zelenskyy is not making a mindless fix easy with unwavering won't-give-up-any-gains-Putin. Putin has violated ceasefires 25 times, and that is making it even harder for Ukraine to cave into Russian aggression, including Russians' gains of "dead cities" and land-grabs. So ending the war in a day isn't working out so well for Trump and it was a grandiose statement to make regardless, not a thoughtful one of taking into considerations how opposed Russia and Ukraine are in terms of what would make peace or a compromise possible. 

Maybe Trump needs the adulation of ending the war quickly so he can keep his word, and when it isn't given to him as quickly as he wants, the punishments come? Or he hands "a win" over to one of them? And what's in it for him? That he can end the war in a day, adulation, attention, blaming and blame-shifting, or something that's a bit more thoughtful than many of us have seen so far?

Is the message here you must make peace? You must compromise? You both must take some losses? "Russia, you must give Ukraine back its territory"? or "Ukraine, you must cede some territory to Russia"? 

Or is it going to be: "You must give something to bullies and invaders, and give into bullies and be grateful for what they give you, and for what you have left."

Is it any different than what child abuse survivors deal with in their abusive families? "Negotiate with bullies"? Is that the way this always goes no matter if it's in the family, in the community or on the world stage? 

And must bullies always win something to keep them from attacking you further? I think we know the answer to that. 

This is where my curiosity is at the moment: what will Ukraine have to compromise on, if anything? And how will they be treated going forward? 

At the time I write this, no more weapons are being given to Ukraine from the U.S.A. to defend itself, but what other punishments must it endure I wonder other than more missile attacks from Russia?  

So that issue being played out on the world wide stage is also bothering me, as well as the continual disappointment that human beings are so violent, still so unempathetic to other people's plight (at least for my tastes), that human beings display way too much sycophancy when they feel over-powered (and that has kept my attention more than any other subject in recent current events), so inept at fair negotiations, so inept about assessing their own abilities, and more ego driven than seems reasonable, sane or possible. 

But most of all, there is the sycophancy of senators, congressman, justices, cabinet members, voters, newspaper owners, media companies, law firms, churches, and world leaders. That is so stunning to me.

But I shouldn't be so stunned from all of the research I do on this subject, but somehow or other I was not prepared or aware enough of the numbers (!) of sycophants. I also wasn't prepared to see how much people were willing to give up for a leader, and give into a leader, and to repeat crazy-making statements of a leader, and prostate themselves to a leader no matter what they did, what they said, how they acted and whether there are ulterior motives for all of these things. 

Who knew that being led without any reservations was so popular, especially with the whiplash policies enacted and detracted by this administration. 

What happened to: "I agree with this policy, but not that policy", "I think this step is too unethical; I'd rather go in this direction", "Why don't we try ----", "What would you think if we had a 3% tariff instead of a 25% one, and saw how a lower rate played out before raising it? With the advent of serious trade wars, is it really wise to slap a 25% tariff on so many things Americans now rely on?" - Where are these kinds of discussions among Republicans? 

Then there is what Martin Luther King described as "the appalling silence of the good people." 

I wonder to what lengths and depths the sycophancy goes before they stop being sycophants? Or is there a bottomless pit of it to the point where they appear to have absolutely no convictions, no thoughts or minds of their own, no actions of their own, like one of those wind-up robot storm troopers who fall all over one another in Darth Vader's regime?

Or will they simply be lobotomized in a final act of taking every shred of a will if they dare anything other than mere puppet strings attached to their mind and soul? 

People who have literally lost their own minds in exchange for being dictated to can't really serve a country, let alone constituents, can they? 

So maybe I'll write an article on the sycophants themselves after a number of years have gone by just to see how much they will sell their soul, to see how much they give up on morals and truth-telling, to see how much criminal behavior they have let become normalized and "every-day", to see how much hypocrisy they allow in policies and laws, to see just how much the sycophants mirror their leader even in terms of speech, types of words, types of expressions, and types of dress and hair (as the "favored" children in abusive households often do), to see if they all get voted out or disfavored when and if Trump ever vacates the Oval Office. He has said that "you'll never have to vote again" ... another link from Reuters via You Tube, another from ABC 7 in Chicago via You Tube, another from SP ESPN (full clip of Trump's part of that speech via You Tube) so I doubt he's planning on leaving willingly.

And how will that play out? 

Trump may have to go to The Supreme Court, or ignore The Supreme Court for a ruling on that!

So why won't we be able to vote again? Because each and every loyal sycophant and their storm troopers will guard all of the voting booths throughout the land from being used? Will there be Marshall Law because America has invaded Canada or Greenland, or because the country is too broken to function?

And then there's the Department of Government Efficiency run by a guy on daily doses of Ketamine, Elon Musk, a non-native from South Africa, who said that "empathy is destroying American life" (and here's another link where he remarks that "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.") What could possibly go wrong with that? - said facetiously, of course! 

The dismantling of government agencies is startling, with many mistakes requiring re-hiring, which tells me that impulsivity and speediness are top agendas in these matters. "Destroy and build back if we need to"? But what if those workers find other jobs in the meantime?

In terms of the empathy deficit issue, the problem with having empathy (trying to mind-read Musk here) is that you can't just blindly and without reservation go fire thousands upon thousands of workers without feeling something about their plight, or about the beneficial jobs they did for the American people, or about the people who were reliant upon these agencies, or about any reactions to it at all? "We don't care about any reactions at all to the dismantling"? Is that it?

Without empathy, I'd bet you can destroy just about anything you want without thinking about repercussions fanning out into all aspects of society, culturally, personally (health, disability and education, transportation), and even ecologically, financially and internationally. 

Or is it a ticket to a couple of individuals feeling powerful and invincible 24/7? 

I heard from someone recently who lives in the northeast that their local Wildlife Reserve's building for its workers was without heat and lights, and that the government had taken them off of their website. So this is how they keep from firing workers directly, just make sure the heat and lights for the buildings aren't paid? Hmm, I suspect there will be other stories like this about government agencies or reserves, yes?

And then there are the tariffs (or at least the threat of very high tariffs). I agree with economics Professor Emeritus Richard Wolff on that. It's not about lowering taxes, the usual broad policy that American Republicans usually vote on. It's adding huge taxes of 25 % on imported goods when most of what we buy from food, to petroleum, to clothes, to construction supplies and everything in-between are mostly exported into this country. So it won't make the average Republican voter's life better; it will make their lives considerably worse. And it will cause inflation. 

As for Democrats who are willing to pay more taxes to get more services and safety nets, they've been let down too economically. The amount of taxes doesn't seem to add up to many services any more, at least not the kind of services you'd expect for the amount of money you pay, and not the kind of efficiency you'd expect. So they are disenchanted with the economic picture too, and probably even more angry than Republicans are that the tax money they pay are going to tax breaks for the billionaires. 

And the reason why the services are falling apart and getting dismantled more and more is because their taxes are being used to pay on the debt, at least partly. And who owns most U.S. debt? China and Japan. China has used the money to build their own big empire and to align with Russia, Iran and other dictatorships. 

Where do all of these facts I write about come from? Economists, and researchers and professors of economics (like Richard Wolff). Look them up yourself. 

Knowing all of this, I decided to take some time to reassess my own life and challenges in the present time, which is why I haven't been publishing posts for this blog. 

In the meantime, my general questions about humans who are granted power, attention or rewards run along these lines (talking about the sycophants among us mainly): 

* How often do humans give up their own convictions and moral codes to get more rewards, attention and power?

* What is the rate of abandoning convictions in terms of getting more rewards, attention and power?

* And are they more likely to give up convictions and moral codes of conduct when they feel threatened by a dictatorial person? 

* Are they willing to give up more convictions and moral codes of conduct to the more brutal dictators than the less brutal ones? 

* Are there any studies on whether sycophancy makes a person less intelligent, less able to make good decisions? Does it decrease cognition, shut off parts of the brain similar to PTSD, decreases the ability to decipher effective outcomes for problems that take a lot of detailed thought? Since all a person has to do is parrot, I wonder how much any kind of thinking goes off-line?

* Are sycophants more lazy than the rest of us? 

* Do sycophants primarily do what they are told to do to get the issues off of their back?

* Do sycophants fawn much more than they need to if they are yelled at or over-powered verbally (such as Trump did in the Oval Office when Zelenskyy tried to speak)? 

* Why do so many sycophants stay quiet when a leader is yelling at another person? Do they want to speak up? Or do they shrivel from speaking because they are frightened? 

* Which is more prevalent for sycophants: the freeze response or the fawn response, and in what contexts?

* What parts of the brain go off-line and which parts light up when they see their "dictatorial person" walk in the room looking angry? Looking calm? In a rage, even if they are just the bystander? In a blinding rage, even if the rage isn't making sense to them? Looking smug? Rolling their eyes? And so on ... (I'm sure these answers aren't available and haven't even been studied ... I haven't been able to find much of anything).

* Is the human race, in general, becoming more boot-licking or less? Are we evolving to become more fawning or less fawning? 

* And why do scapegoats of societies fight back against being expected to fawn? Are they really different in that way compared to most people? Is there something different about their brains even? And if fawning and sycophancy is "the normal way", do they feel outcast because they aren't like that? 

* How much do people respect sycophancy when it goes to more and more extremes such as normalizing constant raging, sins, ethics, crimes, and murders? Is there really no end to ever-deepening sycophancy once someone goes more and more in that direction? Do they even know what they think, believe, know any more? Or can it all change in an instant?

* Do they believe the dictator, or do they self-check? And if they do self-check, how much, and is it dependent on how ruthless the dictator is?

* And if "their great leader" falters and falls from disgrace, do they minimize the fall, or the unethical behavior and say things like, "He had his good points", "He's human. Like everyone, he made mistakes", "It really wasn't that bad", and so on. And do they tell others who were hurt by his actions to "forgive and forget", to "move on already!", to "think about the future", to "think about the good things rather than the bad things he did", to "be thankful for what you got rather than unthankful for what you didn't get", to "see him the way we did", and so on. 

* Do most sycophants have splintered personalities where they don't know who they are except as an arm and a brown-noser of a dictator? 

* Do sycophants like being similar to a dictator, or are their actions primarily fear-driven? 

* Do sycophants like being sycophants until their leader is disgraced? 

* Do they think that not being a sycophant isn't a normal human quality, that rebels are abnormal or sub-human? Do they have arrogance as a sycophant as compared to rebels? 

* Do they think that when they are a sycophant that they are showing gratitude, even if that leader has very few altruistic motives and very criminal ones? 

* Do all sycophants think in terms of loyalty and gratitude no matter what unethical policies are being enacted, or how many crimes are being committed (in other words, how common is this way of thinking for sycophants)?

* Are there more rewards for sycophancy, more acceptance, than speaking your own mind and having convictions? Or does it just look like more rewards with terrible down-sides towards the end of a reign? 

* How often do sycophants serve as flying monkeys to a dictator in the end (flying monkeys referring not to just enabling, but doing the dictator's bidding, dirty deeds, and crimes, and also taking the rap for those actions instead of making the dictator responsible and accountable)?

* How often do lawyers, prosecutors and judges become sycophants or enabling? What are the statistics on that? Does sycophancy in these professions lead to corruption? It would seem yes, right?

I'd really like to know the answers to these questions, but undoubtedly they have to be researched by bona-fide researchers at universities and colleges to make the research scientific, and I doubt there's anything but a handful of articles, if even that, written about this phenomenon. 

In the meantime, I'll watch congressmen, senators, judges, cabinet members, et al, to see how far they'll go into more sycophancy, to see if it is the popular personality type of the moment or of the years. I bet it gets tested to the max! And I'd bet this is what Trump means in terms of loyalty: "How much of a sycophant can you really be for me? And by the way, do you believe the 2020 election was stolen from me?"

FUTURE POST

Before I publish my posts on "Poverty and Scapegoats" and "Are Scapegoats Really Rebellious?", I finished another post on hoovering, a subject that is important in the study of narcissism and why survivors often go back to their abusers. Hoovering is also a precursor to stalking, and stalking is against the law.

Hoovering is something that I mention enough in my own posts, but there is either no link, or a link to other writers on the subject. Because it has been written about extensively I thought it would be a bit redundant or boring. 

No. It was actually pretty interesting and vital to the discussions and includes how narcissists use head games and manipulations to get you "back into your place" on their power and control hierarchy, where they take the lead, and you take the rear, of course. If you refuse to get back in place, I discuss the repercussions of that. And with narcissists there are always repercussions even with the ultimate in what they want: total and blind sycophancy. 

UPDATE

I planned to have a post published a couple of weeks ago, and I hope it can be published by the weekend, but there are a number of issues going on in my life. I am just one person who keeps the blog alive for my readers. 

The major work I have done on narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder as it relates to abuse is almost done. I was asked to do a post on "What is the real identity of a narcissist? And how can they go from such kindness to utter cruelty in the blink of an eye? Are they mostly cruel or are they mostly kind? Which is it? What's their real character? And why do they try to hide their cruelty and justify it? Do they really believe their cruelty is justified?" - in large part this question will be answered this weekend (hopefully), but not all of it, but you will be able to see why a lot more clearly. 
     (edit: published on August 31st, actually - later than I thought)

The other ones that I will be publishing (hopefully in quick succession) will be about:

- narcissists and envy and jealousy and what it has to do with abuse

- how shame and rage are intertwined in narcissistic abuse, and even why they discard people, why they can't really hear what you are saying, their propensity to have selective hearing, and why they are so destructive to others especially in self esteem matters when this is going on. This "trait" is pretty exclusive to them, and when you see it, you can't "un-see it". It can help you to make a choice as to how you want to relate to them, whether you want to back off, only see them twice a year at a public place, and so on. I think it is as "stand-out" and as important as their grasping for power and control in most interpersonal relationships. Most of us know that abuse is about power and control - that aspect of abuse has been talked about the most, and drilled into the public consciousness for at least three decades. But there is another aspect to their rage besides power and control and it is as important as the power and control issue, something absolutely imperative to look out for, and why it can be a marker and a warning sign for safety issues, for how much further to proceed, why it is such a big deal for them and not for us, and why they would take such big chances at destroying relationships over it. The first post I'll be publishing on "what kind of identity do narcissists have?" is a precursor to the shame/rage post. Without that one, it's hard to understand this topic.  

For these two posts, the writing is done except for some touch-ups. 

I also did a recent update on THIS POST about trauma and illness. Check that out.

Some shorter posts are in the works too, and are well known to this condition (however, I'll be interspersing them more with other topics that have more to do with trauma research and Borderline Personality Disorder as it relates to the topic of abuse). Some of the other posts in the works on narcissism include: 

- hoovering and sometimes stalking

- a much deeper dive into the narcissist's typical way of dealing with chronic or serious interpersonal problems (idealize, devalue, discard) often accompanied by either the silent treatment or hoovering, and how it relates to common trauma responses in the people that are dealing with this - it might be saved for when I begin the trauma section of this blog since they are so often linked.
  
- Narcissist's "superiority complex" - do they have reasons for this other than wanting power and control over others? Is persuading you that they are superior about trying to make you feel that you are hierarchically much lower than they are, even if you don't want to be in the hierarchy game and could care less about this narcissistic competition of theirs? Or is it about trying to get you to accept that they are the authority on subjects and issues and that you are not? Or is it about about feeding their ego? Sort of all of these things, but it is not really looking into the core of the matter. It actually has a lot more to do with "what kind of identity and character do most narcissists have?", the post-to-be-published next. But underneath it all, do they really feel like this "big know-it-all", bigger-than-life, bigger-than-thou, super confident, super-man or super-woman person most of the time? Hint: not so much, and especially for covert narcissists, and especially since this grandiosity fails them in big ways especially when they are older than 30 or so. They can't stand to admit it because then "the power and control agenda" is compromised and can be disputed, at least in their eyes, and most feel they can't have that questioned (most narcissists feel that power and control over others is imperative to their well being).

     The issue, really, has more to do with why they prefer superseding "who they really are" with this constant barrage of aggressive persuasion-oriented "I-know-the-answer talk" instead. In other words, "the superiority complex" is really a defense mechanism so much of the time.

- broken relationships, estrangements, divorces, affairs - most of this has to do with power and control demands, shame-rage issues, triangulation, lack of empathy, and the fact that most people don't know how to relate to the narcissist's tactics beyond trauma responses where non-narcissists are called upon to give up all of their personal power (autonomous decision-making) and boundaries and so much more of themselves ... which is to say that most people get trauma symptoms when they are in close personal relationships with narcissists. There are a few who don't get trauma symptoms, some who get mild trauma symptoms, and some who get full blown PTSD, and I'll be discussing that too.

- Why narcissists spiral down in terms of morals and ethics when they are challenged, or feel they have to "win something", or after they traumatize others (note: it is not always for sadistic reasons, although in some of them it is exactly for those reasons - these would be your malignant narcissists). Most of them don't really have any morals and ethics to begin with beyond what they find serves them (and where they make sure the ethics and morals are different for them than they are for you), but they also don't have many ethics and morals because of their childhood background too. You'll see why.

- the isolation tactic (trying to isolate you from others - it's partly why they gaslight, and it is why they triangulate to some degree, and it is used as punishment against you too) ... even so, they use it on just about everyone in their close personal relationships as an extremely "flawed" insurance policy to keep from being abandoned, to keep from losing power, and to keep you in the role that they have assigned to you. It doesn't garner the results they want all that well, and once they try to use it in the punishment stage, it is really quite in-effectual (unless they are keeping you under lock and key, but then it's not just an isolation tactic any more that we are talking about). You will understand why it is more masochistic than rewarding for the narcissist. So, if you feel like they are trying to control relationships, and who says what to whom, and they are trying to dominate conversations that you are having with others, or when they tell others what you feel and think, they have an agenda to keep you from forming deep attachments to others - usually. And you definitely see it when they are at the "smear campaign stage."
     It explains a lot of why, in narcissistic families, siblings are not close, or when children feel that their extended family has been told something they are not aware of because the family is not as welcoming and friendly as, say, the friends, teachers, neighbors, most other grown-ups, or your other side of the family. In the more extreme cases trying to isolate you is why narcissists threaten false imprisonment or go through with false imprisonment, why they constantly threaten abandonments too, and why they try to infantilize and parentify you and expect you to follow orders (i.e. micro-manage what you do and what you say to others), and it even has quite a bit to do with stalking, home invasion, the suspicious behavior they show, keeping track of your whereabouts including who you are seeing, what you are talking about with those people, and way too much interrogating, and more. This is an important one to understand too, but it may be published some time after I talk about Borderline Personality Disorder just so that you can see the difference between the two in this regard. 
    This is to say that one sub-type of borderline can make attempts to isolate you too (but in a different way and for somewhat different reasons), and your reactions to being isolated are treated differently by them too. 
     It is also to say that attempts to isolate don't always mean they are a narcissist. 
     In fact, sociopaths and psychopaths (the antisocial personality disordered) also isolate those people they are in close personal relationships with and can be much more dangerous about it than borderlines and narcissists.

- Tit-for-tat parenting. Quite the topic, isn't it? This has a lot to do with mirroring, but not in a love-bomb-y style, but in a revenge style. Both are very similar. It can, and does, create some fall from grace for the narcissistic parent, and cause others to sometimes say, "Who is the parent here? They are acting like a child!" Exactly. But this isn't one I'll publish any time soon, as it is not integral to the discussion on narcissism, and in order to get a better picture on abuse and trauma subjects in general, posts like this need to be sand-bagged for awhile. 

But all of these posts-in-the-works give you a very shortened version of what is happening with the rest of these narcissistic traits.  

Hopefully I can get to the goal I set before of introducing more trauma-related subjects and Borderline Personality Disorder research this fall. Maybe some posts on alcoholism can be part of the picture too. And of course, I have some posts to share on current events that are done, but can't be understood entirely without the ones on identity, shame-rage, and jealousy as it relates to narcissism. 

Thank you to the many readers who keep coming back. 

Lise